Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=04/04/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01304

TITLE=THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: The Conduct of the war for Iraq. Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: The U-S-led coalition has been trying to minimize the danger and hardship to Iraqi civilians in the war to liberate Iraq. But army and paramilitary forces loyal to the regime of Saddam Hussein have adopted tactics that deliberately put Iraqi civilians in harm's way. Saddam's Fedayeen, as the paramilitaries are called, have disguised themselves as civilians to ambush coalition soldiers. The Fedayeen have used Iraqi women and children as human shields. In the city of Basra, the Fedayeen attacked Iraqi civilians with machine guns and mortars when they tried to flee. Saddam's armed forces have turned schools and hospitals into armories and headquarters. Fedayeen gunmen have occupied the Ali Mosque in Najaf, one of the most sacred sites to Shiite Muslims. President George W. Bush said, "Every atrocity has confirmed the justice and urgency of our cause. "He promised that war criminals will be hunted relentlessly and judged severely. How is the war for Iraq being fought? I'll ask my guests: Al Santoli, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy council; David Rivkin, a Washington-based international lawyer; and joining us by phone from Boston, Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress. Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

David Rivkin, are Iraqi forces committing war crimes?

Rivkin: Absolutely. They are engaged in massive violations of a wide range of laws of war. They are doing it at all chains of command. For example, as you know, they executed American P-O-Ws. They are taking human shields. They have commingled their forces with civilian assets like schools and mosques and hospitals. They are shooting civilians. There are accounts which indicate that they are seizing children to force their parents to fight. You name it. I cannot think of one tenet of the laws of war not violated. And these are not individualized violations. These are clearly violations undertaken as a matter of state policy because they pretty much promise that that's what they're going to do.

Host: Al Santoli, what makes something a law of war?

Santoli: Well, there are certain international laws and rules under the Geneva conventions that call for certain conduct in terms of the way prisoners are treated, for instance, the way that war in civilian areas is conducted, the types of weapons one uses in terms of weapons of mass destruction. And you would say that a lot of it's going on now. It's turning into a very ugly urban war. Again, many places, small towns and at some point it appears that Baghdad will also be, at least right now, in the suburbs of Baghdad, and we'll see how it progresses as time goes by. And I know that for the American side there was hope that it would not come to that. That the regime would see that, you know, the fight would continue as far as they wanted to take it. Unfortunately, they're choosing to use civilians as virtual hostages.

Host: Zainab Al-Suwaij are you there by phone with us?

Suwaij: That's right.

Host: Yes, what does Islam say about the rules of war?

Al-Suwaij: Well, of course not to fight with civilians and not to kill innocent people, especially the people who are women and children and to treat the women prisoners of war, well, good treatment until the war is finished and then you can return them back to their family and homeland. But unfortunately, I think the Iraqi government is not doing that. And keeps forcing people to fight and they don't allow them, also, to flee the cities that they are in. So, they are in between two things. They cannot leave because they have family members who've been [taken as] hostages and they cannot really be safe in their home because the government keeps torturing them and they keep confined.

Host: Now you are from the south of Iraq. Which city do you come from?

Al-Suwaij: Basra.

Host: Basra. And do you see from your experience when you lived in Basra the action of Saddam's loyalists at this point as an outgrowth of the way Saddam's regime has operated for decades?

Al-Suwaij: Oh, definitely. This is their way, since the day that I started realizing how brutal this government is. Saddam, he does not care about the people. He does not care about the innocent lives inside Iraq. All that he cares about is his power -- his remaining power -- and control of these people and to steal the wealth of their country. So, what we are seeing here is just a small example. I'm not surprised by it because I think Saddam is capable of doing much more harm to humanity and to the Iraqi people. He is doing that and he will continue doing it. And Iraq will not be safe until Saddam Hussein is out of power.

Rivkin: Let me just throw one thing in. This is literally the first war in the history of mankind where a civilian population has more to fear from their own military and their own government than from an invading army. And I would say despite the quite deplorable record amassed by people like Hitler or Stalin, I am not aware of instances where they have targeted their own civilians.

Host: Well, let's talk about this issue of civilians and how Iraq is treating them a little bit. There's a report from Human Rights Watch about the violation of rules of war that Iraq has been committing and it talks again and again about what it calls perfidy and it says, "When combatants disguise themselves as civilians or surrendering soldiers, that's a serious violation of the laws of war. Any such blurring of the line between combatant and non-combatant puts all Iraqis at greater risk." And that's from Human Rights Watch. Al Santoli, is that what the rules of war are primarily about? Not about the type of conduct per se, but rather an effort to protect civilians as much as possible?

Santoli: Well, that is one of what can be considered rules of war. Any of us who've been in war understand that those lines get blurred under conditions. I experienced that as a soldier. I know that there's people all over the world who have been in conflicts and combat where once you start to fight in a civilian area, it's very difficult to separate civilians from soldiers, especially when you're using airplanes and artillery and other very large weapons, even in terms of bullets. You know when you're fighting in a town and people are shooting hundreds of rounds of ammunition per person at each other, it's the unfortunate situation where innocent people get caught up in the line of fire. I would say the thing here that we're concerned about is the tactic where it's a designed national strategy that you would blur that distinction on purpose. And that you would in fact in order to protect yourself and to prolong hoping for a political victory, when the world opinion would see enough civilians killed. That, it appears, is what Saddam's tactic is -- to get as many civilians killed as possible and hope that international opinion would then support him and try to drive the Americans out.

Host: Zainab Al-Suwaij, when Iraqi forces park a tank next to a hospital as has happened so far, is it your sense that that's more of an effort to protect the tank from being bombed or is that an effort to draw fire on the hospital to produce casualties that can be then touted on media?

Al-Suwaij: Well, I think it's more to hurt the people inside the hospital. And I don't doubt that they put it there on purpose. It might be empty and doesn't have any soldiers in it. And just to bring the airplanes or the allies to bomb and they think this is a military area, so they can bomb that place and they will say: "Well look, they didn't care about [it being] a hospital. All they did was bomb." And Saddam is very smart in using this technique and innocent people as human shields to get what he wants. And his purpose is to show that he's a hero in the front of many other countries who oppose this war. And to show also that America is targeting civilians and this is not a just war and of course, all of this serves his own propaganda for staying in power and terrorizing these people while patrolling the region.

Host: Now, Ms. Al-Suwaij, have there been tactics related to these that are meant to keep people in the south of Iraq from welcoming coalition forces in?

Al-Suwaij: Oh, definitely. The security there is very tight and people are not allowed to leave their homes and the Fedayeen and the Republican Guard and some of the Baath party members are forcing people, giving them weapons and forcing them, especially male, to go and fight. And if they refuse, then they will kill the whole family or one of the family members. So they have to do that and they are, most of them, of the people there, they are waiting for the minute to be free of Saddam Hussein's regime and his brutal dictatorship all of these years.

Host: David Rivkin, the idea that these kinds of crimes would affect civilians perhaps more than the soldiers -- we've seen one instance of an attack on U-S soldiers using a car bomb appearing to be a civilian taxi cab approaching a checkpoint. And then this has led not long after to a van approaching a similar checkpoint and being fired upon after warning shots were fired, that led to innocent people being killed. Is that the natural progression? And how can that be avoided?

Rivkin: Well, a couple of things. That's a good question. Indeed, that's one of the key reasons why you want to protect the non-combatants, civilians and adhere to those rules. Those rules are designed precisely to avoid creating a situation where enforcing these distinctions becomes more difficult. If people start firing at you while wearing civilian clothes, while they pretend to surrender and then fire at you as you approach, or ram your checkpoint -- what you have to do to protect yourself, you adopt the rules of engagement, as indeed happened in the second episode, that are more prone to creating those problems. And I want to emphasize we're doing it as an exact straight conformance with the laws of war. However, because of his actions, conditions are created where those types of problems can arise much more easily. And to answer perhaps your earlier question: What does he want? Does he want to protect his military targets or does he want civilians to be hurt? I think it's both. It's really both. I mean, in his perspective, you win either way. If we're more reticent to engage military targets because of additional collateral damage, he does better than he would otherwise. If we engage those targets -- which we can under the laws of war, because, let me emphasize for your listeners, if somebody collocates a military target with a civilian target, you can still go after the military target. The civilian aspects would become collateral damage. It is legally possible. It's, of course, unfortunate and undesirable. So, from his perspective, you win either way.

Host: Al Santoli, there have been critics of the coalition effort to unseat Saddam Hussein, who have said when the U-S points out these violations of the rules of war, that it's somehow silly to talk about rules of war when there's fighting going on. It's war, you know, there are no rules.

Santoli: Well, I'll take it back a step to the suffering of the Iraqi people over the past ten years, during which time there was an oil-for-food program. There was a lot of consternation and I think it was legitimate consternation about the plight of the Iraqi people. But where the argument fell short in terms of those defending Saddam, was that he had lots of money coming in from his oil revenues. But instead of spending it on food and medicine for his people, which he was completely permitted to do under the U-N law, and the equipment which the United States had agreed to, he chose to build up his military rather than provide food and medicine for his people. So, if you just base it on that conduct during peacetime, it's not surprising, the tactics that they're using now.

Al-Suwaij: That's right and it's not only military. He kept building palaces for himself and giving money to his friends around the country to keep terrorizing the people and keep controlling every city and torturing more people.

Host: Ms. Al-Suwaij, let's talk a little bit about another incident that has been cited as a violation of laws of war. The mosque in Najaf.

Al-Suwaij: Najaf.

Host: Najaf. It's the Ali Mosque. Tell us about the Ali Mosque and its importance to Shia Muslims.

AL-Suwaij: That's right. Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf is where Imam Ali is buried and he's considered the leader of the Shia. He's the cousin and the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed. And after the Prophet Mohammed died, Shiites think that he should be the successor after the Prophet's death because he is married to his daughter and he is assigned by the prophet to be the carrier of the message after Mohammed's death. So, he came to Iraq after that and he was buried there and Shiites from all over the world, not only Iraqis or Iranians, Shiites from Pakistan, India, Bahrain, all over the world go to Najaf and they ask to be buried in Najaf close to that mosque. And historically and religiously it's a very important city and mosque for Shiite Muslims. Now, in 1991, Saddam destroyed this mosque because most of the people who rebelled and were part of the uprising against Saddam Hussain's government, they were hiding in that mosque and they are taking it as a place of leadership. And so the Republican Guards fought the people, destroyed that mosque and killed all the people who were inside. Saddam is using this right now, using this mosque as a place that they can hide in so if the coalition force tries to attack or get them out, it's going to be -- he thinks that's going to make Shiites inside Iraq very angry and because he wants to blame that on the coalition, that they destroyed it, not Saddam. And he is also going to do many other similar things like this. As you mentioned before, going to hospitals, hiding military or Republican Guards in hospitals and schools and civilian areas just to show the world that this war is against the civilians; to show the Iraqis who believe in him, who are loyal to him, in other words, that this war led by the coalition is against the innocent Iraqi people. No doubt he will do much more than that. He might burn a whole area or kill a lot of civilians and blame it on American forces or Britain.

Host: David Rivkin, the U-S has avoided actually attacking those forces that are in the Ali Mosque, so far just focusing in the area by being very careful not to hit the mosque itself. How does that, what does that say about efforts to adapt to the circumstances of forces that violate the rules and laws of war and how it can be adapted to fight around that?

Rivkin: In general, I would say the coalition forces have adopted the most restrictive rules of engagement ever, much more restrictive even than during the Kosovo war or Gulf War One. These are perhaps the most humanistic rules of engagement. In fact, for the first time again in the history of warfare, not only do we try to protect the lives of civilians -- which is of course our obligation -- we've actually tried not to kill as many Iraqi soldiers as possible. The whole discussion about "Shock and Awe" early on was actually in the hope of persuading them to surrender or disperse. We did not engage many Iraqi units. We could have. And some people have actually argued that this has resulted in protracting the war. I would say that in the coalition perhaps, there's a tough bit, with these rules of engagement. We are still operating in an enormously careful and discriminate fashion, much more so than actually the legal requirements call for. Because we want to do the right thing. We want to underscore that our fight is against the regime and not against the people. But it creates problems. It causes additional casualties. I have no doubt that some of the British casualties around Basra have been caused by the fact that they have just been very careful in returning fire.

Host: Al Santoli, on the issue of P-O-Ws, there have been those who say, "Well, how can the U-S complain about how P-O-Ws are treated if, for example, illegal combatants from Afghanistan have been taken to Guantanamo Bay." What is the issue of treatment of P-O-Ws?

Santoli: I think it comes into physical abuse. And for those who have been taken to Guantanamo, it's an inconvenience that they're taken far away from their homeland and they're kept in confinement. But they are not tortured. They are given medical care. Many of the accounts even in the Islamic press, have talked about people returning to their countries from Guantanamo looking much better, much fatter than when they left Afghanistan. So, every effort is being made to be able to take care of people in a humane manner. Now, the one thing that I find very interesting, because I've been watching news broadcasts, or excerpts of news broadcasts that are being shown across the Arab world. And I think what you're finding here is a disparity on one hand, where you're getting raw footage of incidents where civilians have been hurt. And there is not really a discussion, like we're having now, about what is the other side of the story in terms of the tactics and the conduct of the war.

Host: I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word because we're out of time for today. I'd like to thank my guests for joining me today. Al Santoli of the American Foreign Policy council, David Rivkin, a lawyer with Baker and Hostetler; and joining us by phone, Zainab Al-Suwaij of the American Islamic Congress. For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.